Report No. 12 of the Massachusetts School Board (1848)
Horace Mann

The European tradition of education centered in the family rather than
in schools did not take root in the United States, because the pattern
of the extended family--several generations living under one roof--disappeared
on the frontier. As families moved to take advantage of free land, the
old educational patterns broke down, and new forms were generated. As a
result, Americans began to delegate more and more educational responsibility
to the schools. The basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic were
just the start; over the decades society has assigned many other skills
previously learned in the homes to be taught in schools.

But aside from teaching knowledge and skills, reformers saw the schools
as the logical place to inculcate democratic idealism. In the 1820s universal
education was an idea held by only a few visionaries; within a generation,
a majority of the states had bought into this idea. Aside from abolition,
no other reform movement of the Jacksonian era had such success, and the
key figure was Horace Mann.

Born in Massachusetts in a Calvinist small town, Mann (1796-1859) had
little formal education as a youth, but read a lot at the town library,
where he learned enough to be admitted to Brown University. After graduation
in 1819 he taught for a while, studied law and then entered politics, where
he soon became a rising star in the state assembly. Then in 1835, he shocked
family and friends by taking the job of secretary to the Massachusetts
Commission to Improve Education (later the State Board of Education), an
agency with no money or control over local schools.

Mann's only instrument was the Annual Report he wrote, in which he set
forth his vision of what education should be in a free society. Between
1837 and 1848, Mann became the best-known educator in America, and the
best-known American educator throughout the world. Why?

His central thesis was essentially Jeffersonian--no republic can endure
unless its citizens are literate and educated. Moreover, he strongly believed,
as did the Puritans of two centuries earlier, that education should be
moralistic.

But the United States in the 1830s had a greater diversity in social
and economic status, as well as in religious and moral values, than had
Puritan New England two centuries earlier. To this heterogeneity, Mann
wanted to introduce the "common school"--that is, a school common
to all the people, that would provide a common and unifying experience.

This was a radical idea in the United States in the nineteenth century,
and would be a radical idea in the rest of the world until after the Second
World War. Europe continued to have a dual school system, in which the
more prosperous classes were placed on a track leading to a university
education, while the children of the poor were directed toward simple vocational
training.

Mann wanted to eliminate the religious and class distinctions implicit
in this dual system. The common school would be commonly supported, commonly
attended and commonly controlled; its ultimate goal would be sociological
and national unity.

Mann's faith was total. There were no limitations, at least in his mind,
to what the common school could do. He believed that the traditional curriculum
could be universalized, and that culture, hitherto reserved for the upper
classes, could be democratized.

But the most important element in Mann's faith was that schools could
preserve and sustain a democratic society. Unlike Jefferson, he did not
believe that education by itself was a virtue. Its value lay in the benefits
it brought to society as well as to the individual. In the sections that
follow, taken from his last Annual Report, Mann summed up his views on
how an educated populace would avoid the social and economic divisions
of the Old World, and how educated citizens would ensure the triumph of
democratic government.

For further reading: Jonathan Messerli, Horace Mann: A Biography (1972);
Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The National Experience (1980);
and Michael Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform (1968).

Report No. 12 of the Massachusetts School Board

Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery
by which the "raw material" of human nature can be worked up
into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers,
into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions,
and the great expounders of ethical and theological science. By means of
early education, these embryos of talent may be quickened, which will solve
the difficult problems of political and economical law; and by them, too,
the genius may be kindled which will blaze forth in the Poets of Humanity.
Our schools, far more than they have done, may supply the Presidents and
Professors of Colleges, and Superintendents of Public Instruction, all
over the land; and send, not only into our sister states, but across the
Atlantic, the men of practical science, to superintend the construction
of the great works of art. Here, too, may those judicial powers be developed
and invigorated, which will make legal principles so clear and convincing
as to prevent appeals to force; and, should the clouds of war ever lower
over our country, some hero may be found,--the nursling of our schools,
and ready to become the leader of our armies,--that best of all heroes,
who will secure the glories of a peace, unstained by the magnificent murders
of the battle-field. . . .

Without undervaluing any other human agency, it may be safely affirmed
that the Common School, improved and energized, as it can easily be, may
become the most effective and benignant of all the forces of civilization.
Two reasons sustain this position. In the first place, there is a universality
in its operation, which can be affirmed of no other institution whatever.
If administered in the spirit of justice and conciliation, all the rising
generation may be brought within the circle of its reformatory and elevating
influences. And, in the second place, the materials upon which it operates
are so pliant and ductile as to be susceptible of assuming a greater variety
of forms than any other earthly work of the Creator. The inflexibility
and ruggedness of the oak, when compared with the lithe sapling or the
tender germ, are but feeble emblems to typify the docility of childhood,
when contrasted with the obduracy and intractableness of man. It is these
inherent advantages of the Common School, which, in our own State, have
produced results so striking, from a system so imperfect, and an administration
so feeble. In teaching the blind, and the deaf and dumb, in kindling the
latent spark of intelligence that lurks in an idiot's mind, and in the
more holy work of reforming abandoned and outcast children, education has
proved what it can do, by glorious experiments. These wonders, it has done
in its infancy, and with the lights of a limited experience; but, when
its faculties shall be fully developed, when it shall be trained to wield
its mighty energies for the protection of society against the giant vices
which now invade and torment it;--against intemperance, avarice, war, slavery,
bigotry, the woes of want and the wickedness of waste,--then, there will
not be a height to which these enemies of the race can escape, which it
will not scale, nor a Titan among them all, whom it will not slay.

Now I proceed, then, in endeavoring to show how the true business of
the schoolroom connects itself, and becomes identical, with the great interests
of society. The former is the infant, immature state of those interests;
the latter, their developed, adult state. As "the child is father
to the man," so may the training of the schoolroom expand into the
institutions and fortunes of the State. . . .

Intellectual Education, as a Means of Removing Poverty, and Securing
Abundance

Another cardinal object which the government of Massachusetts, and all
the influential men in the State should propose to themselves, is the physical
well-being of all the people,--the sufficiency, comfort, competence, of
every individual, in regard to food, raiment, and shelter. And these necessaries
and conveniences of life should be obtained by each individual for himself,
or by each family for themselves, rather than accepted from the hand of
charity, or extorted by poor-laws. It is not averred that this most desirable
result can, in all instances, be obtained; but it is, nevertheless, the
end to be aimed at. True statesmanship and true political economy, not
less than true philanthropy, present this perfect theory as the goal, to
be more and more closely approximated by our imperfect practice. The desire
to achieve such a result cannot be regarded as an unreasonable ambition;
for, though all mankind were well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed, they
might still be but half-civilized. . . .

According to the European theory, men are divided into classes,--some
to toil and earn, others to seize and enjoy. According to the Massachusetts
theory, all are to have an equal chance for earning, and equal security
in the enjoyment of what they earn. The latter tends to equality of condition;
the former to the grossest inequalities. Tried by any Christian standard
of morals, or even by any of the better sort of heathen standards, can
any one hesitate, for a moment, in declaring which of the two will produce
the greater amount of human welfare; and which, therefore, is the more
conformable to the Divine will? The European theory is blind to what constitutes
the highest glory, as well as the highest duty, of a State. . . .

I suppose it to be the universal sentiment of all those who mingle any
ingredient of benevolence with their notions on Political Economy, that
vast and overshadowing private fortunes are among the greatest dangers
to which the happiness of the people in a republic can be subjected. Such
fortunes would create a feudalism of a new kind; but one more oppressive
and unrelenting than that of the Middle Ages. The feudal lords in England,
and on the continent, never held their retainers in a more abject condition
of servitude, than the great majority of foreign manufacturers and capitalists
hold their operatives and laborers at the present day. The means employed
are different, but the similarity in results is striking. What force did
then, money does now. The villein of the Middle Ages had no spot of earth
on which he could live, unless one were granted to him by his lord. The
operative or laborer of the present day has no employment, and therefore
no bread, unless the capitalist will accept his services. The vassal had
no shelter but such as his master provided for him. Not one in five thousand
of English operatives, or farm laborers, is able to build or own even a
hovel; and therefore they must accept such shelter as Capital offers them.
The baron prescribed his own terms to his retainers; those terms were peremptory,
and the serf must submit or perish. The British manufacturer or farmer
prescribes the rate of wages he will give to his work-people; he reduces
these wages under whatever pretext he pleases; and they too have no alternative
but submission or starvation. In some respects, indeed, the condition of
the modern dependant is more forlorn than that of the corresponding serf
class in former times. Some attributes of the patriarchal relation did
spring up between the lord and his lieges, to soften the harsh relations
subsisting between them. Hence came some oversight of the condition of
children, some relief in sickness, some protection and support in the decrepitude
of age. But only in instances comparatively few, have kindly offices smoothed
the rugged relation between British Capital and British Labor. The children
of the work-people are abandoned to their fate; and, notwithstanding the
privations they suffer, and the dangers they threaten, no power in the
realm has yet been able to secure them an education; and when the adult
laborer is prostrated by sickness, or eventually worn out by toil and age,
the poor-house, which has all along been his destination, becomes his destiny.

Now two or three things will doubtless be admitted to be true, beyond
all controversy, in regard to Massachusetts. By its industrial condition,
and its business operations, it is exposed, far beyond any other state
in the Union, to the fatal extremes of overgrown wealth and desperate poverty.
Its population is more dense than that of any other state. It is four or
five times more dense than the average of all the other states, taken together;
and density of population has always been one of the proximate causes of
social inequality. According to population and territorial extent, there
is far more capital in Massachusetts,--capital which is movable, and instantaneously
available,--than in any other state in the Union; and probably both these
qualifications respecting population and territory could be omitted without
endangering the truth of the assertion. It has been recently stated, in
a very respectable public journal, on the authority of a writer conversant
with the subject, that, from the last of June, 1846, to the 1st of August,
1848, the amount of money invested, by the citizens of Massachusetts, "in
manufacturing cities, railroads, and other improvements," is "fifty-seven
millions of dollars, of which more than fifty has been paid in and expended."
The dividends to be received by the citizens of Massachusetts from June,
1848, to April, 1849, are estimated, by the same writer, at ten millions,
and the annual increase of capital at "little short of twenty-two
millions." If this be so, are we not in danger of naturalizing and
domesticating among ourselves those hideous evils which are always engendered
between Capital and Labor, when all the capital is in the hands of one
class, and all the labor is thrown upon another?

Now, surely, nothing but Universal Education can counter-work this tendency
to the domination of capital and the servility of labor. If one class possesses
all the wealth and the education, while the residue of society is ignorant
and poor, it matters not by what name the relation between them may be
called; the latter, in fact and in truth, will be the servile dependents
and subjects of the former. But if education be equably diffused, it will
draw property after it, by the strongest of all attractions; for such a
thing never did happen, and never can happen, as that an intelligent and
practical body of men should be permanently poor. Property and labor, in
different classes, are essentially antagonistic; but property and labor,
in the same class, are essentially fraternal. The people of Massachusetts
have, in some degree, appreciated the truth, that the unexampled prosperity
of the State,--its comfort, its competence, its general intelligence and
virtue,--is attributable to the education, more or less perfect, which
all its people have received; but are they sensible of a fact equally important?--namely,
that it is to this same education that two thirds of the people are indebted
for not being, to-day, the vassals of as severe a tyranny, in the form
of capital, as the lower classes of Europe are bound to in the form of
brute force.

Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great
equalizer of the conditions of men--the balance-wheel of the social machinery.
I do not here mean that it so elevates the moral nature as to make men
disdain and abhor the oppression of their fellow-men. This idea pertains
to another of its attributes. But I mean that it gives each man the independence
and the means, by which he can resist the selfishness of other men. It
does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility towards the rich;
it prevents being poor. Agrarianism is the revenge of poverty against wealth.
The wanton destruction of the property of others,--the burning of hay-ricks
and corn-ricks, the demolition of machinery, because it supersedes hand-labor,
the sprinkling of vitriol on rich dresses,--is only agrarianism run mad.
Education prevents both the revenge and the madness. On the other hand,
a fellow-feeling for one's class or caste is the common instinct of hearts
not wholly sunk in selfish regards for person, or for family. The spread
of education, by enlarging the cultivated class or caste, will open a wider
area over which the social feelings will expand; and, if this education
should be universal and complete, it would do more than all things else
to obliterate factitious distinctions in society.

The main idea set forth in the creeds of some political reformers, or
revolutionizers, is that some people are poor because others are rich.
This idea supposes a fixed amount of property in the community, which,
by fraud or force, or arbitrary law, is unequally divided among men; and
the problem presented for solution is, how to transfer a portion of this
property from those who are supposed to have too much, to those who feel
and know that they have too little. At this point, both their theory and
their expectation of reform stop. But the beneficent power of education
would not be exhausted, even though it should peaceably abolish all the
miseries that spring from the coexistence, side by side, of enormous wealth
and squalid want. It has a higher function. Beyond the power of diffusing
old wealth, it has the prerogative of creating new. It is a thousand times
more lucrative than fraud; and adds a thousandfold more to a nation's resources
than the most successful conquests. Knaves and robbers can obtain only
what was before possessed by others. But education creates or develops
new treasures,--treasures not before possessed or dreamed of by any one.
. . .

If a savage will learn how to swim, he can fasten a dozen pounds' weight
to his back, and transport it across a narrow river, or other body of water
of moderate width. If he will invent an axe, or other instrument, by which
to cut down a tree, he can use the tree for a float, and one of its limbs
for a paddle, and can thus transport many times the former weight, many
times the former distance. Hollowing out his log, he will increase, what
may be called, its tonnage,--or, rather, its poundage,--and, by sharpening
its ends, it will cleave the water both more easily and more swiftly. Fastening
several trees together, he makes a raft, and thus increases the buoyant
power of his embryo water-craft. Turning up the ends of small poles, or
using knees of timber instead of straight pieces, and grooving them together,
or filling up the interstices between them, in some other way, so as to
make them water-tight, he brings his rude raft literally into ship-shape.
Improving upon hull below and rigging above, he makes a proud merchantman,
to be wafted by the winds from continent to continent. But, even this does
not content the adventurous naval architect. He frames iron arms for his
ship; and, for oars, affixes iron wheels, capable of swift revolution,
and stronger than the strong sea. Into iron-walled cavities in her bosom,
he puts iron organs of massive structure and strength, and of cohesion
insoluble by fire. Within these, he kindles a small volcano; and then,
like a sentient and rational existence, this wonderful creation of his
hands cleaves oceans, breasts tides, defies tempests, and bears its living
and jubilant freight around the globe. Now, take away intelligence from
the ship-builder, and the steamship,--that miracle of human art,--falls
back into a floating log; the log itself is lost; and the savage swimmer,
bearing his dozen pounds on his back, alone remains.

And so it is, not in one department only, but in the whole circle of
human labors. The annihilation of the sun would no more certainly be followed
by darkness, than the extinction of human intelligence would plunge the
race at once into the weakness and helplessness of barbarism. To have created
such beings as we are, and to have placed them in this world, without the
light of the sun, would be no more cruel than for a government to suffer
its laboring classes to grow up without knowledge...

For the creation of wealth, then,--for the existence of a wealthy people
and a wealthy nation,--intelligence is the grand condition. The number
of improvers will increase, as the intellectual constituency, if I may
so call it, increases. In former times, and in most parts of the world
even at the present day, not one man in a million has ever had such a development
of mind, as made it possible for him to become a contributor to art or
science. Let this development precede, and contributions, numberless, and
of inestimable value, will be sure to follow. That Political Economy, therefore,
which busies itself about capital and labor, supply and demand, interest
and rents, favorable and unfavorable balances of trade; but leaves out
of account the element of a wide-spread mental development, is nought but
stupendous folly. The greatest of all the arts in political economy is,
to change a consumer into a producer; and the next greatest is to increase
the producer's producing power;--an end to be directly attained, by increasing
his intelligence...

Political Education

The necessity of general intelligence,--that is, of education, (for
I use the terms as substantially synonymous; because general intelligence
can never exist without general education, and general education will be
sure to produce general intelligence,)--the necessity of general intelligence,
under a republican form of government, like most other very important truths,
has become a very trite one. It is so trite, indeed, as to have lost much
of its force by its familiarity. Almost all the champions of education
seize upon this argument, first of all; because it is so simple as to be
understood by the ignorant, and so strong as to convince the skeptical.
Nothing would be easier than to follow in the train of so many writers,
and to demonstrate, by logic, by history, and by the nature of the case,
that a republican form of government, without intelligence in the people,
must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers,
would be, on a small one;--the despotism of a few succeeded by universal
anarchy, and anarchy by despotism, with no change but from bad to worse.
Want of space and time alike forbid me to attempt any full development
of the merits of this theme; but yet, in the closing one of a series of
reports, partaking somewhat of the nature of a summary of former arguments,
an omission of this topic would suggest to the comprehensive mind the idea
of incompleteness.

That the affairs of a great nation or state are exceedingly complicated
and momentous, no one will dispute. Nor will it be questioned that the
degree of intelligence that superintends, should be proportioned to the
magnitude of the interests superintended. He who scoops out a wooden dish
needs less skill than the maker of a steam-engine or a telescope. The dealer
in small wares requires less knowledge than the merchant who exports and
imports to and from all quarters of the globe. An ambassador cannot execute
his functions with the stock of attainments or of talents sufficient for
a parish clerk. Indeed, it is clear, that the want of adequate intelligence,--of
intelligence commensurate with the nature of the duties to be performed,--will
bring ruin or disaster upon any department. A merchant loses his intelligence,
and he becomes a bankrupt. A lawyer loses his intelligence, and he forfeits
all the interests of his clients. Intelligence abandons a physician, and
his patients die, with more than the pains of natural dissolution. Should
judges upon the bench be bereft of this guide, what havoc would be made
of the property and the innocence of men! Let this counsellor be taken
from executive officers, and the penalties due to the wicked would be visited
upon the righteous, while the rewards and immunities of the righteous would
be bestowed upon the guilty. And so, should intelligence desert the halls
of legislation, weakness, rashness, contradiction, and error would glare
out from every page of the statute book. Now, as a republican government
represents almost all interests, whether social, civil or military, the
necessity of a degree of intelligence adequate to the due administration
of them all, is so self-evident, that a bare statement is the best argument.

But in the possession of this attribute of intelligence, elective legislators
will never far surpass their electors. By a natural law, like that which
regulates the equilibrium of fluids, elector and elected, appointer and
appointee, tend to the same level. It is not more certain that a wise and
enlightened constituency will refuse to invest a reckless and profligate
man with office, or discard him if accidentally chosen, than it is that
a foolish or immoral constituency will discard or eject a wise man. This
law of assimilation, between the choosers and the chosen, results, not
only from the fact that the voter originally selects his representative
according to the affinities of good or of ill, of wisdom or of folly, which
exist between them; but if the legislator enacts or favors a law which
is too wise for the constituent to understand, or too just for him to approve,
the next election will set him aside as certainly as if he had made open
merchandise of the dearest interests of the people, by perjury and for
a bribe. And if the infinitely Just and Good, in giving laws to the Jews,
recognized the "hardness of their hearts," how much more will
an earthly ruler recognize the baseness or wickedness of the people, when
his heart is as hard as theirs! In a republican government, legislators
are a mirror reflecting the moral countenance of their constituents. And
hence it is, that the establishment of a republican government, without
well-appointed and efficient means for the universal education of the people,
is the most rash and fool-hardy experiment ever tried by man. Its fatal
results may not be immediately developed,--they may not follow as the thunder
follows the lightning,--for time is an element in maturing them, and the
calamity is too great to be prepared in a day; but, like the slow-accumulating
avalanche, they will grow more terrific by delay, and, at length, though
it may be at a late hour, will overwhelm with ruin whatever lies athwart
their path. It may be an easy thing to make a Republic; but it is a very
laborious thing to make Republicans; and woe to the republic that rests
upon no better foundations than ignorance, selfishness, and passion. Such
a Republic may grow in numbers and in wealth. As an avaricious man adds
acres to his lands, so its rapacious government may increase its own darkness
by annexing provinces and states to its ignorant domain. Its armies may
be invincible, and its fleets may strike terror into nations on the opposite
sides of the globe, at the same hour. Vast in its extent, and enriched
with all the prodigality of nature, it may possess every capacity and opportunity
of being great, and of doing good. But if such a Republic be devoid of
intelligence, it will only the more closely resemble an obscene giant who
has waxed strong in his youth, and grown wanton in his strength; whose
brain has been developed only in the region of the appetites and passions,
and not in the organs of reason and conscience; and who, therefore, is
boastful of his bulk alone, and glories in the weight of his heel and in
the destruction of his arm. Such a Republic, with all its noble capacities
for beneficence, will rush with the speed of a whirlwind to an ignominious
end; and all good men of after-times would be fain to weep over its downfall,
did not their scorn and contempt at its folly and its wickedness, repress
all sorrow for its fate. . . .

However elevated the moral character of a constituency may be; however
well informed in matters of general science or history, yet they must,
if citizens of a Republic, understand something of the true nature and
functions of the government under which they live. That any one who is
to participate in the government of a country, when he becomes a man, should
receive no instruction respecting the nature and functions of the government
he is afterwards to administer, is a political solecism. In all nations,
hardly excepting the most rude and barbarous, the future sovereign receives
some training which is supposed to fit him for the exercise of the powers
and duties of his anticipated station. Where, by force of law, the government
devolves upon the heir, while yet in a state of legal infancy, some regency,
or other substitute, is appointed, to act in his stead, until his arrival
at mature age; and, in the meantime, he is subjected to such a course of
study and discipline, as will tend to prepare him, according to the political
theory of the time and the place, to assume the reins of authority at the
appointed age. If, in England, or in the most enlightened European monarchies,
it would be a proof of restored barbarism, to permit the future sovereign
to grow up without any knowledge of his duties,--and who can doubt that
it would be such a proof,--then, surely, it would be not less a proof of
restored, or of never-removed barbarism, amongst us, to empower any individual
to use the elective franchise, without preparing him for so momentous a
trust. Hence, the constitution of the United States, and of our own State,
should be made a study in our Public Schools. The partition of the powers
of government into the three co-ordinate branches,--legislative, judicial,
and executive,--with the duties appropriately devolving upon each; the
mode of electing or of appointing all officers, with the reason on which
it was founded; and, especially, the duty of every citizen, in a government
of laws, to appeal to the courts for redress, in all cases of alleged wrong,
instead of undertaking to vindicate his own rights by his own arm; and,
in a government where the people are the acknowledged sources of power,
the duty of changing laws and rulers by an appeal to the ballot, and not
by rebellion, should be taught to all the children until they are fully
understood.

Had the obligations of the future citizen been sedulously inculcated
upon all the children of this Republic, would the patriot have had to mourn
over so many instances, where the voter, not being able to accomplish his
purpose by voting, has proceeded to accomplish it by violence; where, agreeing
with his fellow-citizens, to use the machinery of the ballot, he makes
a tacit reservation, that, if that machinery does not move according to
his pleasure, he will wrest or break it? If the responsibleness and value
of the elective franchise were duly appreciated, the day of our State and
National elections would be among the most solemn and religious days in
the calendar. Men would approach them, not only with preparation and solicitude,
but with the sobriety and solemnity, with which discreet and religious-minded
men meet the great crises of life. No man would throw away his vote, through
caprice or wantonness, any more than he would throw away his estate, or
sell his family into bondage. No man would cast his vote through malice
or revenge, any more than a good surgeon would amputate a limb, or a good
navigator sail through perilous straits, under the same criminal passions.

But, perhaps, it will be objected, that the constitution is subject
to different readings, or that the policy of different administrations
has become the subject of party strife; and, therefore, if any thing of
constitutional or political law is introduced into our schools, there is
danger that teachers will be chosen on account of their affinities to this
or that political party; or that teachers will feign affinities which they
do not feel, in order that they may be chosen; and so each schoolroom will
at length become a miniature political club-room, exploding with political
resolves, or flaming out with political addresses, prepared, by beardless
boys, in scarcely legible hand-writing, and in worse grammar.

With the most limited exercise of discretion, all apprehensions of this
kind are wholly groundless. There are different readings of the constitution,
it is true; and there are partisan topics which agitate the country from
side to side; but the controverted points, compared with those about which
there is no dispute, do not bear the proportion of one to a hundred. And
what is more, no man is qualified, or can be qualified, to discuss the
disputable questions, unless previously and thoroughly versed in those
questions, about which there is no dispute. In the terms and principles
common to all, and recognized by all, is to be found the only common medium
of language and of idea, by which the parties can become intelligible to
each other; and there, too, is the only common ground, whence the arguments
of the disputants can be drawn.

It is obvious, on the other hand, that if the tempest of political strife
were to be let loose upon our Common Schools, they would be overwhelmed
with sudden ruin. Let it be once understood, that the schoolroom is a legitimate
theatre for party politics, and with what violence will hostile partisans
struggle to gain possession of the stage, and to play their parts upon
it! Nor will the stage be the only scene of gladiatorial contests. These
will rage in all the avenues that lead to it. A preliminary advantage,
indispensable to ultimate success, will be the appointment of a teacher
of the true faith. As the great majority of the schools in the State are
now organized, this can be done only by electing a prudential committee,
who will make what he calls political soundness paramount to all other
considerations of fitness. Thus, after petty skirmishings among neighbors,
the fierce encounter will begin in the district's primary assembly,--in
the schoolroom itself. This contest being over, the election of the superintending,
or town's committee, must be determined in the same way, and this will
bring together the combustibles of each district, to burn with an intenser
and a more devouring flame, in the town meeting. It is very possible, nay,
not at all improbable, that the town may be of one political complexion,
while a majority of the districts are of the opposite. Who shall moderate
the fury of these conflicting elements, when they rage against each other;
and who shall save the dearest interests of the children from being consumed
in the fierce combustion? If parents find that their children are indoctrinated
into what they call political heresies, will they not withdraw them from
the school; and, if they withdraw them from the school, will they not resist
all appropriations to support a school from which they derive no benefit?

But, could the schools, themselves, survive these dangers for a single
year, it would be only to encounter others still more perilous. Why should
not the same infection that poisons all the relations of the schoolroom,
spread itself abroad, and mingle with all questions of external organization
and arrangement? Why should not political hostility cause the dismemberment
of districts, already too small; or, what would work equal injury, prevent
the union of districts, whose power of usefulness would be doubled by a
combination of their resources? What better could be expected, than that
one set of school books should be expelled, and another introduced, as
they might be supposed, however remotely, to favor one party or the other;
or, as the authors of the books might belong to one party or the other?
And who could rely upon the reports, or even the statistics of a committee,
chosen by partisan votes, goaded on by partisan impulses, and responsible
to partisan domination; and this, too, without any opportunity of control
or check from the minority? Nay, if the schools could survive long enough
to meet the crisis, why should not any and every measure be taken, either
to maintain an existing political ascendancy, or to recover a lost one,
in a school district, or in a town, which has even been taken by unscrupulous
politicians, to maintain or to recover an ascendancy at the polls? Into
a district, or into a town, voters may be introduced from abroad, to turn
the scale. An employer may dismiss the employed, for their refusal to submit
to his dictation; or make the bread that is given to the poor man's children,
perform the double office of payment for labor to be performed, and of
a bribe for principle to be surrendered. And, beyond all this, if the imagination
can conceive any thing more deplorable than this, what kind of political
doctrines would be administered to the children, amid the vicissitudes
of party domination,--their alternations of triumph and defeat? This year,
under the ascendancy of one side, the constitution declares one thing:
and commentaries, glosses, and the authority of distinguished names, all
ratify and confirm its decisions. But victory is a fickle goddess. Next
year, the vanquished triumph; and constitution, gloss, and authority, make
that sound doctrine, which was pestilent error before, and that false,
which was true. Right and wrong have changed sides. The children must now
join in chorus to denounce what they had been taught to reverence before,
and to reverence what they had been taught to denounce. In the mean time,
those great principles, which, according to Cicero, are the same at Rome
and at Athens, the same now and forever;--and which, according to Hooker,
have their seat in the bosom of God, become the fittest emblems of chance
and change.

Long, however, before this series of calamities would exhaust itself
upon our schools, these schools themselves would cease to be. The plough-share
would have turned up their foundations. Their history would have been brought
to a close,--a glorious and ascending history, until struck down by the
hand of political parricide; then, suddenly falling with a double ruin,--with
death, and with ignominy. But to avoid such a catastrophe, shall all teaching,
relative to the nature of our government, be banished from our schools;
and shall our children be permitted to grow up in entire ignorance of the
political history of their country? In the schools of a republic, shall
the children be left without any distinct knowledge of the nature of a
republican government; or only with such knowledge as they may pick up
from angry political discussions, or from party newspapers; from caucus
speeches, or Fourth of July orations,--the Apocrypha of Apocrypha?

Surely, between these extremes, there must be a medium not difficult
to be found. And is not this the middle course, which all sensible and
judicious men, all patriots, and all genuine republicans, must approve?--namely,
that those articles in the creed of republicanism, which are accepted by
all, believed in by all, and which form the common basis of our political
faith, shall be taught to all. But when the teacher, in the course of his
lessons or lectures on the fundamental law, arrives at a controverted text,
he is either to read it without comment or remark; or, at most, he is only
to say that the passage is the subject of disputation, and that the schoolroom
is neither the tribunal to adjudicate, nor the forum to discuss it.

Such being the rule established by common consent, and such the practice,
observed with fidelity under it, it will come to be universally understood,
that political proselytism is no function of the school; but that all indoctrination
into matters of controversy between hostile political parties is to be
elsewhere sought for, and elsewhere imparted. Thus, may all the children
of the Commonwealth receive instruction in the great essentials of political
knowledge,--in those elementary ideas without which they will never be
able to investigate more recondite and debatable questions;--thus, will
the only practicable method be adopted for discovering new truths, and
for discarding,--instead of perpetuating,--old errors; and thus, too, will
that pernicious race of intolerant zealots, whose whole faith may be summed
up in two articles,--that they, themselves, are always infallibly right,
and that all dissenters are certainly wrong,--be extinguished,--extinguished,
not by violence, nor by proscription, but by the more copious inflowing
of the light of truth.

Source: Lawrence A. Cremin, ed., The Republic and the School: Horace
Mann on the Education of Free Men (1957), 79-80, 84-97.